Campaign Spending Record High After Citizens United

Gene Policinski, vice president and executive director of the First Amendment Center, looks at spending in this first presidential election since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission. He writes that the total cost of the 2012 elections is estimated at $6 billion, which would make it the most expensive election in U.S. history. "Finding the right speech-spending balance also pits two core principles against each other: full exercise of Americans’ protected right to speak loudly on politics and public issues, vs. negating the corrupting influence in elections and government policy that may accompany the presence of “big money,” he writes in the Tennessean. "The results are still out on all of those 2012 election-night questions."